Archived News:

Saturday, Jun 11, 2011

A break-in on the Epic Games Website is the latest in a rash of data breaches on gaming websites. Here's a note from Epic passed along by Mouser:

Our Epic Games web sites and forums were recently hacked. After some downtime, they're back up and running now.

The hackers may have obtained the email addresses and encrypted passwords of forum users. Plaintext passwords weren't revealed, but it's possible that those passwords could be obtained by a brute-force attack on the encrypted passwords. Therefore, we have reset all passwords. Your new password at the bottom of this message.

This interview on GameMarshal.com chats with Tore Blystad and Christian Elverdam of IO Interactive about Hitman: Absolution, the next installment in the stealth/action series. They offer an extensive explanation of the game's new "instinct" ability, action sequences, scripted elements, stealth, creative assassination options, animations/cinematics, and more. They also discuss the game's new engine:

Yes, the game is running on a brand new engine we call Glacier 2. This is a proprietary engine that we have created ourselves. Our big message this year for E3 is how we built all of the tech from scratch. What this allowed us to do is to look at all of the elements from the previous games in the franchise and work on them from a clean slate. We closely examined what worked in the previous games and what didn’t, and how we could improve the game and make it better for new and existing fans to enjoy. Our goal was to take what is the true foundation of the franchise and build upon it.

Well, E3 2011 is in the books. By most accounts the revelations from the show this year were a disappointment. Of course there are what seems like dozens of other trade shows before the end of the year, so there are ample opportunities to make up for this.